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• WASHINGTON (AP) -- State funding for pre-kindergarten programs had its largest drop ever last year and states are now spending less per child than they did a decade ago, according to a report released Monday.
• The report also found that more than a half million of those preschool students are in programs that don't even meet standards suggested by industry experts that would qualify for federal dollars.
• Those findings -- combined with Congress' reluctance to spend new dollars -- complicate President Barack Obama's effort to expand pre-K programs across the country. While Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continue to promote the president's proposal, researchers say existing programs are inadequate, and until their shortcomings are fixed there is little desire by lawmakers to get behind Obama's call for more preschool.
• "The state of preschool was a state of emergency," said Steven Barnett, director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University, which produced the report.
• During his State of the Union speech, Obama proposed a federal-state partnership that would dramatically expand options for families with young children. Obama's plan would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income was below twice the federal poverty rate.
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Man vaults pews and lashes out at NM choir, sending 4 churchgoers to hospital with stab wounds
• ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -- Just as the St. Jude Thaddeus Catholic Church choir began its final hymn, a man vaulted over pews and lashed out at the singers, sending four churchgoers to the hospital with stab wounds, authorities said.
• Worshippers screamed as the shocking and chaotic scene unfolded Sunday with the attacker continuing the onslaught until he was tackled and held by church members for officers, who raced to the scene, police said.
• Four parishioners were injured, including church choir director Adam Alvarez and (Continued on page 30)
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